


sniperpilot week 2k17

by cassandor



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (for a lot of things like), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, First Kiss, First Meetings, First Time, Force Sensitivity, M/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 16:07:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11294097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandor/pseuds/cassandor
Summary: my fills for @bassianweek on tumblr!





	1. there’s a first time for everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> June 19th: First Times & 20th: Happy Ending

Their eyes first lock between bars of a cell.  Cassian’s heart pounds with worry as perspiration beads on the back of his neck. The all-encompassing question rises to his lips. He waits, and waits, and it feels like an eternity.

Finally, the pilot replies, and then there is only relief.

(Or is there more?)

* * *

He laughs for the first time since this mission began, picking their way along the rocks up to the ridge. Not a happy laugh, but a surprised one.

He marvels at this defector’s bravery. He marvels at _him_  too, but all of that is swept away by the rain when he sees the pointed suspicion in Bodhi’s eyes.

Cassian is a cold-hearted killer. He remembers this, and then there is only acceptance.

(Or is there more?) 

* * *

He’s never woken up alone in a medbay. Cassian has, and knows the terror of it, so he keeps watch, despite his protesting back and the protesting medics. Worry eats away at his nerves and only faith in the Rebellion’s most talented medics keeps full-blown meltdowns at bay.

Eventually, Bodhi’s eyes meet his for the first time since Scarif, and then there is only relief.

(Or is there more?) 

* * *

Bodhi says it first, three words whispered fleetingly - for love and kindness roll freely off his tongue. Cassian hesitates, not for lack of affection, but for excess of it. Hesitation brought by a lifetime’s worth of loss.

Bodhi doesn’t mind. He says it again, and again, and again. For him, there is only love and nothing else.

Cassian struggles with the possibilities, with the war, with the entire universe itself. 

* * *

He doesn’t say anything before they part ways on dangerous missions. He doesn’t say it when one of them barely makes it back. He doesn’t say it when they finally recover. 

That is how they first kiss. Cassian doesn’t  _regret_ it, but his heart is torn between dashing Bodhi’s hopes and pushing him into the crossfire of a battle they might not even win.

* * *

Cassian finally says it, repeats the phrase  again, and again, and again, trying desperately to make up for every time he didn’t. A lifetime’s worth of loss brings him here. Death takes, and takes, and takes. But not today. 

Today, they end Death itself. 

He didn’t think he even deserved to see the day, but the Force had always had a plan for him. 

The Death Star falls, bringing the Empire down with it, and when the sky clears so does his future.

“I love you,” he finally tells Bodhi, for now love and kindness roll freely off his tongue, the sieve of war no long there to catch them. 

There is only love and nothing else.


	2. millions of voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> June 22nd: Force Sensitive Bodhi Rook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bodhi being force sensitive in canon is an idea I’ve being toying with for a while (recognize the title?). I feel I’ve neglected Bodhi’s voice for a while (& so cassian doesn’t show up till later).

 

Voices, voices, voices. 

The hood muffles the alien voices around him. Short bursts of Jedhan dialects he doesn’t recognize. A few voices out of millions. He aches for his mother tongue.

His mother tongue, his mother’s voice. 

 _Good for nothing._  The affectionate insult that had lost all of its affection.  _All I expect of you is to not get into trouble. And what do you do? Get into trouble._

He forgets the cause for the scolding - one he had heard a million times - but he could only imagine the words she’d hurl at him after this.

This. 

 _Can you say you played no part in this?_  Galen’s rational voice, steady and calm. The voice that started his journey, the voice that spurs him onward even now as the desert eats away at his skin, at his resolve, at his sanity. _You can get right by yourself. You can make it right, if you are brave enough.... and if you listen to what is in your heart._

What was in his heart? He shoves aside fantasies of water and stumbles on. _Bravery, bravery, bravery._ He remembers the harmonized voices of Guardians chanting on street corners. _The force is one with me, I am one with the force. And I fear nothing, for all is as the force wills it._

He chokes back a laugh, recalling the cool feeling of his mother’s devotional kyber under his fingertips. What force had brought him here, what force makes his suffer like this? He cannot feel it, but something burns him like the star burning brightly above.

Let them have their faith in the force. Galen had faith in him, and he could not let that faith crumble to ashes. 

He wouldn’t be able to bear hearing the insults in Galen’s voice.

 

* * *

 

Voices, voices, voices.

His own voice, spitting words like flame. 

_\- Is that him? He looks kind of different than I imagined._

Burning with desperation. _Make it right, make it right,_ Galen’s voice echoes, as if he was a ghost wailing in the secret hideouts of his childhood.

_Make it right._

_\- We’re just wasting time that we don’t have!_

Before it’s too late. 

\- _What part of **urgent message**  do you guys not understand?!_

Jedha’s star burns high in the sky, and he wonders if he’ll ever see it again. 

Before the Empire swallows it - and him - whole. 

 

* * *

 

Voices, voices, voices.

_Lies! Deceptions!_

Righteous anger burns in his chest. He? A liar? After all he had _done?_ All those years of suffering under the Empire, the huge risk he had taken to get here - and all that earned him the title of _liar_?

\- _I came here myself! I defected! **I defected!**_

An agitated voice rises in his mind, mingles with his hurt, and it sounds _furious_. 

\- _Would I risk everything for a **lie**? _

Anger gives way to determination.

\- _We don’t have **time**  for this!_

The bag is yanked off his head and everything crumbles away in brilliant light.

 _Make it right,_  Galen’s voice nudges. _Clear your name._

 _\- I_ **gave** _it to them, they did not_ **_find_  ** _it!_

But then another, more sinister voice rises from the darkness.

_Bor Gullet._

 

* * *

 

_The unfortunate side effect,_ he bellows, _is that one tends to lose one’s mind._

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t.

(The Force is with him. Or maybe it just needs him for a little longer. Who knows.) 

He doesn’t _lose_  his mind. It’s more that it got all jumbled up, as if someone had knocked his memories off the shelves and thrown them back haphazardly with no semblance of order. 

 

* * *

  _The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded._   _You are not._

 

* * *

 

Who was he? Why was he here? He grasps for the answers but only fog slips through his fingers.

No voice answers him.

He is alone. 

 

* * *

  

But wait - a new voice bursts through the fog. He doesn’t recognize it, only understands the beauty of it.

_Are you the pilot?_

Pilot... _pilot._

_Hey. Hey._

This was a _real_  voice, a _living_ one. Talking to _him._

_Are you the pilot? The shuttle pilot?_

He’s the pilot. And he was sent by... sent by.... 

Muffled voices.

_Galen Erso. You know that name?_

The devil who had condemned him, the savior that had redeemed him.

“I’m the pilot,” he replies, and his voice is worn by the sands of Jedha, but he is determined. 

 

* * *

 

Voices, voices, voices.

Bodhi stares as the wind whips around him, his mouth agape at the sight on the horizon. The Death Star eclipses their star, an omen of the future raining down upon their heads. He is locked in place, tied to his homeworld by an invisible lifeline. Its fate is his. This is his fault after all. He was too late. So as punishment he would die with it.

And then there were the _voices._ A cacophony of a million people crying out for help as everything that they had ever known crumbled around them, crushed by an unseen hand.

It was too much to bear, even harder than the emptiness Bor Gullet had brought upon him. 

He could get lost in the noise. He does, letting the shrieks of terror and desperate calls of help envelop him in an avalanche. Burying him here with all the others. 

It was his fault, after all.

 

* * *

 

But then someone reaches out and touches him and it sends electricity coursing through his body, like a droid on low battery. 

He blinks the dust out of his eyes.

“Come on!” The man - _Cassian,_ he thinks - shouts, pulling him onward. “We need to get out of here!”

Entranced by the mysterious man with the lovely voice, he follows, like a beast of burden being pulled along to better pastures.

 

* * *

 

 Bodhi sits alone, turning his goggles over and over in his hands.

Gone, gone, gone. All of it gone. All his fault for being too late.

“Hey there.”

The voice piques up beside him. It’s the captain. 

“How are you doing?”

Bodhi looks up at him, guilt and anger and fear climbing up his insides. “I heard them screaming. I _felt_  their terror.”

Cassian sits down beside him, takes his hand in his and doesn’t say a word. The captain exudes an aura of calm, soothing waves rolling off and buffeting Bodhi, slowly pushing all the other emotions away.

“Do you think we can stop it?” 

Cassian looks at him, and Bodhi marvels at the depth of the look he gives him. _What life has he lived? What has he seen?_  Something twists inside him. _What has he heard? What has he felt?_  He wonders if Cassian heard the screaming, too. 

“We can hope.” 

 

* * *

 

 It’s Bodhi that finds him after the mishap on Eadu. He wants to be angry - he _was_  angry - but he sees the captain hunched in the pilot’s seat, hair still plastered to his forehead by the rain, and relents. 

“She had a point,” Bodhi begins.

Cassian doesn’t turn.

“You did, too.”

 _Then_  he turns, and Bodhi has to break eye contact. _So this is what a man in mourning looks like._  

 

* * *

 

  _Voices, voices, voices._

_They screamed when the Imperials first came to Jedha._

_They lamented when they stripped the Temple bare._

_They only murmured after that._

_They _murmured when his father died; when his sister left.__

His ears rang with all their voices, his mother a scornful hiss among them, and it was too much to bear: so he ran away from it all. Plugged his ears with the Empire’s lies. 

 

* * *

 

“I thought if I didn’t pay them any attention, they’d fade away. But instead, they got louder,” Bodhi says. “And one day, I decided to listen. To do something about it.” He coughs, signaling the end of his story, wondering if he had crossed a line and now the captain thought he was crazy.

Instead Cassian looks at him warmly, the lines in his face long gone. He stands up and takes Bodhi’s hands in his once again. This time Bodhi can appreciate the feeling, for though Cassian’s hands were unnaturally cold they gripped him tightly and suddenly Bodhi felt tethered, as if he had a place in the universe. 

“And the voices?”

Bodhi chews at his lip. “There’s only one, now. It’s telling me I can’t stop caring again. It’s pushing me onward, and whatever happens back at the base... I want to do more. It’s... a voice of reason.”

“Galen’s?” 

He swallows, hard, and a long forgotten feeling flutters at the base of his heart.

“Yours,” he replies, and his gaze drops to their entwined hands. When Cassian doesn’t pull away Bodhi looks up again, and Cassian is smiling. A small smile, one withered away by years of battle, but a genuine smile nonetheless. Bodhi feels a tug at his own lips, to say something more, to _do_  something more. 

“So if I told you to go back and get some rest, you’d do it?” 

It’s Bodhi’s turn to smile. “Okay.” 

Cassian squeezes his hand, and lets go. 


End file.
